July 2010

People

Working Together
Excerpts from Peter Bregman, "The Farm-to-Table Secret to Motivating People", Harverd Business Review, July 15, 2010, <http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/07/the-farm-to-table-secret-to-mo.html>, accessed on July 15, 2010.

Now I don't know if you've ever milked a goat before, but if not, I suggest you find yourself a farm and try it. Not just because it's a cool feeling. Not just because it's good to know how the whole get-milk-from-an-animal thing works. And not because you better know how because one day you might be thirsty and really need to get milk from an animal. It's not a knowledge or understanding or capability thing. It's an experience thing. Because once you've milked a goat, you'll never drink milk or eat cheese the same way again. You'll choose your milk more carefully. You'll want to know who milked the animal, how that person treated her, and what she ate. And when you drink the milk, you'll have a much deeper appreciation for the taste. In short, you'll care more about your milk than you ever did before.

After the goats, we went to the vegetable fields where the kids (I include myself here) went crazy. We pulled carrots out of the ground. We broke off stalks of kale and swiss chard. We gathered bunches of dill. We picked zucchini. We plucked tomatoes. We collected green peppers. That day, in the field, my kids ate more raw vegetables than ever before.

Where and when you enter a process is a strong determinant of how connected you'll feel to the outcome. If I'm on the receiving end of a new initiative, I'll approach it more critically than if I'm one of the people involved from the beginning.

New sales process? Don't figure it all out yourself and then tell your sales people about it. Let them figure it out with you. If they do the seeding and weeding and picking, they'll be far more likely to eat the produce.

Want customers to buy your service or product? Involve them in the creation of it. I never write proposals anymore and if a client requires it, I'll take myself out of the process. Not because I'm above it — it's the opposite actually — I take myself out of the process because I know I won't win the project. The projects I win — and the only ones I do now — are the ones I design with my clients. Those designs are always far better than anything I could propose on my own because they are informed by my clients' deep knowledge of their companies — their culture, personality, and capacity to absorb change. Most importantly those projects sell — and succeed — because the people impacted by the work feel responsible for its success.

Making It Personal
Excerpts from Baron C. Hanson, "5 Ways to Reach Out Personally at Work", Smart Blog, July 12, 2010, <http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2010/07/12/5-ways-to-reach-out-personally-at-work/>, accessed on July 15, 2010.

The Internet, e-mail, and ever-advancing PDA features have helped shrink the global business world down to efficient, backlit computer screens. However, fundamental human interactions, personal communications and healthy working relationships are suffering tremendously as a result. Here are five ways to deliberately reach out and revive old school voice-to-voice, handwriting-to-handwriting, and face-to-face interactions in today’s business world.

• Pick up the phone.
• Mail a hand-written note.
• Host a cocktail party, lunch, or supper.
• Go see people face-to-face.
• Give relevant gifts, especially books.

The underlying theme of these five interrelated tips is to deliberately reach out, personally. These core tips set a personal tone early, proving that key working and personal relationships in your life are, in fact, important. At the core of the American economic turnaround is the reconnection, reinforcement, and rejuvenation of human relationships, as opposed to their electronic-only demise. There is a reason social media is so popular today, yet still so personally out of touch. Although the Internet, e-mail, and PDAs are technological “work-lines” for us all, reaching out to people via deliberate voice-to-voice, handwriting-to-handwriting, and face-to-face interaction is essential to business success and career sustainability.

Leadership Book: The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team by John C. Maxwell.
Description from Amazon.com:

Everyone who works with people is realizing that the old autocratic method of leadership simply doesn't work. The way to win is to build a great team. John C. Maxwell has been teaching the benefits of leadership and team building for years. Now he tackles the importance of teamwork head on, writing about teamwork being necessary for every kind of leader, and showing how team building can improve every area of your life. Written in the style of the bestseller The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, this new book not only contains laws that you can count on when it comes to getting people to work together, but it tells them in such a way that you can start applying them to your own life today. And it's illustrated with great stories of team leaders--and team breakers--from history, business, the church, and sports.

Coming together, sharing together, working together, succeeding together. - Unknown